Gifts
by The-Angst-Chronicles
Summary: Lance makes handmade presents for the team. Too bad nobody realizes that it's him


**WORD COUNT: 3611**

 **PAIRING: NONE**

 **TAGS: angst, langst**

 **SUMMARY: Lance makes handmade presents for the team. Too bad nobody realizes that it's him.**

 **COMMENTS: Hey guys. Have a quick, unedited garbage fic that I wrote when I needed a break from WEFA. I'm still going to be working mainly on WEFA but little side stories like this help me keep my writing inspiration. I won't start a proper multichapter fic until WEFA is done though. Promise**

 **Like, this is really just a study in self-indulgence ahaha IT'S SO AIMLESS . Inspired by a tumblr post by fistatfirstklance.** **Sorry for bad quality ahaha, I didn't proofread or beta or anything** **. And the weird pacing, I ran out of gumption and lost the path so I just ended it oops. Catch me on tumblr the-angst-chronicles, where I indulge in endless langst ahaha.**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do not own and am not affiliated with Voltron in any way shape or form. I have no ownership of characters, creatures, settings, or objects used in this story. This is a work of fiction. I do not make any profit from this fic whatsoever.**

It had started with Shiro. After they had found him, somehow cast from his lion into another plane that Slav had finally managed to get them to, they had all been so relieved. Keith had smiled for the first time since Shiro had vanished, and Pidge had burst into tears and hugged Shiro while swearing at him. Hunk had been grinning so wide, wider than Lance thought he'd ever seen Hunk grin, and Allura was smiling and telling Shiro that she knew they'd get him back while her eyes swam with tears. Coran had been a mess, blubbering and sobbing into his control panel.

Lance had hung back, knowing that Keith and Pidge were who Shiro would want to see most at that moment. Nevertheless, he had been overjoyed to see Shiro, happy to see the team finally letting the tension that had been slowly strangling them fall away. He'd done his best to keep them from falling too far, but there was not much that Lance could do, not much that he was capable of, not when he was falling apart too. But Shiro, Shiro could calm his team with a word and a hand on the shoulder, and even by just standing here, whole and hale. So Lance was happy.

What he was most happy for, however, was that Shiro was here. That he was alive and safe and not obviously harmed. Still, he watched with sharp eyes because who knows what had happened to Shiro in that time, what he had been forced to go through? So he saw how Shiro flinched at Pidge and Keith's touch, ever so imperceptibly, before he caught himself. He saw how Shiro held himself stiffly, but smiled with genuine warmth at the pair. He saw how Shiro lingered hesitantly when the hugs ended, how he seemed to almost miss the contact even as his body relaxed once it was away from people.

Lance didn't know what to make of this, at first. He was cautious about touching Shiro, and it hadn't taken long for the others to clue in to their leader's involuntary flinches at touch and they too had stopped. Lance was the only one who noticed that Shiro's relief seemed almost tainted by disappointment.

There were little things he picked up. The way Shiro would sometimes curl one of the throws on the Altean furniture to his chest and hug it. The way he would look almost longing when anyone exchanged a hug nearby, or when Lance lay with his head in Hunk's lap. The way he sometimes hugged one of the mice to his cheek before they inevitably squirmed to go back to whatever they'd been doing before he'd picked them up.

Lance thought, maybe, that he needed comfort, but it wasn't as simple as offering a hug. Shiro was still averse to physical contact, only just starting to warm to light touches. There wasn't much Lance could do here either. He thought Pidge or Hunk, with their incredible brains, would have probably figured something out, but Lance couldn't bring himself to bring this to them. It was like betraying a secret that wasn't his.

So he did what he did best – he talked. When he saw Shiro looking a little too lost, too lonely or left out, he'd go over to him and strike up a meaningless conversation. He didn't think it helped. Shiro humoured him because he was kind, but Lance was sure that he was probably just annoying the other man. The only reason that he kept going was because he usually managed to hook somebody else into the conversation, somebody Shiro might be more willing to talk to.

It was after one of these instances that he got the idea. Keith had picked up the dangling tails of the conversation Lance had awkwardly put out and now he and Shiro were reminiscing about the life they'd had before Kerberos. Lance had been paying little attention, absently watching Hunk and Pidge fiddle with whatever technological marvel they were concocting, when Pidge looked up.

"Who's Kuro?" She'd asked in a curious voice. "I heard Matt mention the name but he never told me…"

"Kuro was Shiro's husky," Keith had explained, while Shiro sighed fondly.

"I miss that dog," he'd said with a faraway look in his eyes, his arms unconsciously folding across his body in a self-hug, and Lance's mind lit up with an idea.

The next time Allura had mentioned that they were visiting a market, Lance had run to his room and dug around under his bed until he'd found what he was looking for; some Gak, that a grateful alien who thought Lance was his personal hero just for shooting a Galra had insisted he take. Lance had been going to give it to Allura, but Keith had confronted him about a mistake he'd made during the fight and they had gotten into an argument that led to him storming off to his room. He'd tossed aside his bayard and the money clenched in his fist, and had forgotten it soon after.

Now he had a use for the money. With it tucked safely in his pocket, he'd followed the others to the market. It was almost too easy to lose them – Pidge, Keith, and Shiro had quickly broken off on their own, the younger two following Shiro as he told them about something he wanted to look for. Hunk had stayed with Lance for a short while longer while he looked for foodstuff, but then he saw a stand containing mechanical parts and ran off with a sharp yell of excitement, leaving Lance behind.

Rather than follow his friend, Lance had taken off on his own through the market. By the time he'd found and bought what he wanted, it had been time to head back to the castle. He found the others about to leave, Hunk and Pidge chatting excitedly about Hunks finds while Shiro talked quietly with Keith. He fell silently into step behind them, feeling proud of the unobtrusive bag of purchases dangling at his side.

It took him longer than he'd thought, almost a whole month, between training and paladin duties. He'd taken his time though, wanting this to be perfect.

And, to his surprise, it was. He hadn't been able to stop smiling as he'd looked down at the finished product, a large stuffed husky that was about as cuddly as a toy could be. Pride at his accomplishment had filled him to brim.

But then, as he'd been carrying the little bag containing his gift to give to Shiro, he was suddenly hit by doubt. What was he doing? Shiro was not some child who wanted to play with toys. He'd been a fool to think that this would help anything. He'd stopped there in the hallway, suddenly unable to walk up to his hero and hand him such a childish gift.

He hadn't been able to let all that work go to waste, though. So, like the coward he was, he'd snuck into Shiro's room while Shiro was out, dropped the little bag on his bed, and then run and hid in his room with his face burning with embarrassment until Allura had called them all for training.

Training had been brutal that day, and Lance had all but forgotten about his little present until Shiro came in at dinnertime, unable to stop smiling and cuddling the toy husky up to his chest. When Keith had asked about it, Shiro had beamed at him as he told that he had just found it on the bed with no note.

Watching Shiro smiling softly and stroking the toy throughout dinner, Lance had felt that sense of pride and accomplishment welling up inside him again. He had done something right for once, made someone happy. Maybe if he couldn't be a great paladin, he could be a great teammate. Lance had decided then that he would try to make the rest of his team smile like this.

He'd started with Pidge, when he'd seen her one night huddled at her computer, her little fingers resting loosely on the keys and head drooping forward as she slept. He remembered how she'd said she'd often fallen asleep like this at home, and she woke to the smell of her mum's hot chocolate sitting next to her and Matt's homemade cookies at her feet.

He hadn't been sure how to go about making these things in space – Hunk had yet to figure it out, and Lance couldn't hold a candle to Hunk in the culinary sense. It took him throwing himself to the floor in sheer frustration to get an idea. He'd been laying on his back on the floor of the common room when he heard someone come in and turned his head automatically in the direction of the door. He hadn't been able to see anything, really, just the space underneath the Altean couch. And that old game console that Pidge had tossed aside in frustration that day.

The game console from Earth. Lance had sat up so fast he'd startled Keith, who'd been the one to enter the room, and gotten a kick for his efforts.

It hadn't been easy to get back to the space mall. He'd waited until they were near that system again, close enough that he wouldn't need a wormhole. He'd acted especially energetic that day, pestering the rest of the team endlessly until they were getting tired of him, and then wheedled at Allura that he was bored and wanted to go for a fly. She'd agreed with obvious relief.

So he had taken Blue out and shot off into the vast emptiness of space. Allura had insisted that he keep his comms open in case he was needed back at the castle, but she hadn't asked for constant communication. Lance figured that she'd wanted some peace and quiet.

He hadn't been sure whether the Earth-store would carry what he needed, but he'd been pleasantly surprised. It turned out that as far as food went, it was very well supplied. He'd brought the last of his Gak and bought as much as he could. The shopkeeper had been so happy that he'd almost smiled. Lance had had to talk him down from giving him another cow though – there was no way that he'd be able to hide that sneaking back on the ship.

He'd gotten back to find Keith fuming in his hangar, so he'd left his stash hidden in one of her compartments and gotten out to see what the other boy wanted.

Keith had wanted to yell at him for the irresponsibility of leaving apparently. Lance thought it was a little hypocritical, considering that Keith and Allura had run off in that pod and told Keith as much, leading to an argument centered on whether or not he would have been able to protect Blue had he been found.

Then the alarms had started blaring. Keith had yelled that Lance had probably led the Galra to them, to which Lance responded that Keith's mullet probably drew in everything awful and gross, including Galra, by virtue of being awful and gross itself, and then they'd entered the control room and it turned out that the Galra hadn't found them at all, but were attacking a planet three systems over.

Pidge had ended up in the healing pod, after taking a hit when Lance wasn't quick enough to shoot the opponent. Nobody had called him out on it, but guilt had eaten away at him. By the time she woke up, he could barely face her never-mind wake her to receive his gift.

So he had snuck into the kitchens in the middle of the night and made three batches of cookies before he finally deemed them acceptable. He'd left the piping hot cookies and hot chocolate near her, far enough out of the way that she would not accidentally hit them, and then fled. It was nearing morning, and she would be up soon.

He'd scrubbed the kitchen clean, his stomach twisting with anxiety as he awaited her reaction. She'd probably hate it, he'd reasoned. Why was he trying to remind her of what she'd lost? And what was he doing trying to cook? Even working with weird space ingredients, Hunk's cooking would put his paltry cookies to shame. God, he had given her Disappointment Cookies.

Feeling disheartened, Lance had returned to the rest of his ingredients. He had been planning to make Hunk fritas, which Hunk had fallen in love with after Lance's mother had made him some while he was visiting. He'd also gotten ingredients for a number of other dishes he knew or thought Hunk might like. But he had been fooling himself. He couldn't cook like Mami, and he didn't want to give Hunk Disappointment Fritas too.

So instead he had wrapped the ingredients as they were and left them in the pantry cupboard that Hunk had claimed for himself. He'd then crawled into bed and lay there until he heard Pidge shriek.

She was crying by the time he got there, asking "Who did this?" Lance, feeling incredibly guilty for making her cry, had shrunk back behind Hunk. Shiro had asked her what was wrong, and Pidge latched onto him and started crying "Thank you, thank you," into his shirt. A huge weight had lifted as Lance realized that Pidge had been crying out of happiness, and he felt that buoyant sense of accomplishment again as she'd lifted her face and displayed her huge grin.

Hunk had found his gift later in the day and had promptly broken down into tears and hugged everyone in the vicinity. He'd spent the next five minutes crying and sobbing thanks' into Pidge's shoulder before getting up, wiping his face, and declaring that he was going to show the Alteans real Earth food.

Lance had been on a high for the rest of the day.

It had continued from there. He'd repaired some old ruined tapestries he'd found in the castle for Coran and Allura, knitted Pidge a warm blanket that he'd tucked around her when she'd fallen asleep at her computer yet again, made Keith a sheath for that infernal knife he kept wrapped in bandages like a hobo, rigged up a flaming rock storm on the deck that had had Coran and Allura giggling like children while the rest of them stayed well out of the way, painted a portrait of Shay looking at the sky for Hunk, put together a goddamn thank you card from all the planets they'd rescued (that had been the most difficult so far) for Allura, managed to get the video game console under the couch working for Pidge, put together a homemade moustache care kit for Coran, and much more.

He still hadn't managed to work up the guts to give anyone their gift to their face, always faltering, always thinking that maybe this was the time that he'd gotten it wrong and he was going to have to deal with their disappointment at the lackluster thing he was presenting them with.

There had been nothing but smiles so far, however. Lance couldn't help the proud, happy swell of his heart every time a member of his team found their gift. Every time he walked past Allura and saw her wearing the sparkling necklace he'd made for her or spotted Keith in the training room wearing the hairband to keep his hair out of his eyes, Lance hid to bite his lip and hide his face to keep from beaming.

He'd ended up with a few things himself, too, such as the little guitar he'd gotten at the market that he'd just casually started using one day. The others had thought that he was also a recipient of the gift-giver, and he'd found that amusing enough that he'd not corrected them.

He should have just corrected them, because then he would not be where he was now. Allura had just found his latest gift, a beautiful blown glass rendition of a juniberry flower that he'd had to scour the castle's archives for references of. She'd come into the sitting room where the rest of them had been hanging out, beaming so brightly that Lance had jokingly shaded his eyes.

She'd gone right to Coran and hugged him, thanking him for the lovely gift. Coran, who was sporting his "Space's Best Uncle" sweater, had been confused.

"It wasn't me," he'd said, before admitting that he'd thought it had been her. Lance had stung a bit at that, but he'd shrugged it off. There was no reason for the Alteans to suspect it had been him, and it was only natural they think it were the other. Both had mentioned various things about Altea around the paladins multiple times, but Lance wasn't sure the others paid much attention to it so he wasn't surprised that they attributed the Altean nature of some of his gifts to the other.

"Nah, it had to have been Shiro," Keith had interuppted smirking a little and leaning his arms on his knees. "Those training programs you programmed were really solid – they definitely put me through my paces." That had stung. Keith _still_ didn't consider him a good tactician. Well, joke's on him, because those training programs that had put him through his paces had been designed by _Lance_.

Before he could say anything, however Shiro had shook his head in negation and spoken up. "I thought it was you," he'd confessed to Keith. "The first gift I got was the Kuro toy. I know you're handy with a needle, and you were the only one who really knew Kuro." Lance guessed he couldn't fault Shiro for that. Even if Shiro had mentioned Kuro in front of all of them. Even if it hurt that nobody had even considered him.

"Please, it was definitely Hunk." Pidge had cut in. When everyone looked at her, she'd shrugged as though it was obvious. "He's handy with mechanics, he can cook, and I'm sure he can sew. Besides, who else would be that thoughtful?"

 _Me!_ Lance had wanted to scream. _It was me!_ Was he not thoughtful? The others had been nodding along to Pidge, but Hunk had shaken his head.

"It wasn't me guys. Honestly, I thought it was you Pidge," he'd said with a nervous laugh, and Lance had to bite his lip, hold it in, because not even Hunk had considered him the gift giver.

"Right, you're obviously lying," Pidge had said dismissively, which led to where they were now; the others all arguing with one another about who was lying and who was the gift giver, and Lance just sitting there in shock.

 _None_ of them thought it might be him. Even when he was the last one, the only one who hadn't said that it wasn't him giving the gifts, they turned to accusing each other before they even considered that he may be the one leaving the presents.

Lance clenched his fists and fought back tears, scolding himself harshly. Had he been giving these gifts for praise and ego-stroking? No. He had done it to bring a smile to his friends' faces. And he had. He was just being selfish now, wanting everyone to look at him and be grateful. He felt slightly disgusted with himself, disgusted with the hurt he still felt looking at them literally bickering about which one of them was lying about this.

 _Stop it_ , he'd chided himself. The fact that they didn't think he was the gift-giver even after everyone else was ruled out meant something. It meant that he was a bad teammate, that he was a selfish teammate. It meant that he needed to do better.

Lance wasn't sure how to do better. He was already always friendly and chatty with the paladins. He knew that he wasn't the best company, wasn't the best paladin or teammate, but he had been trying his hardest. Clearly it wasn't enough.

So Lance tried harder. He put aside his problems to help the team with theirs. He spent more time on the training deck, paid more attention to his teammates' positions in battle. And, of course, kept a steady stream of gifts flowing.

It was a conscious decision to keep them anonymous this time. He had already told himself that he was not doing this for attention, so there was no reason to let them know.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Two weeks later they were planetside again, gathering resources, when they stumbled into a Galra trap. They had been paired off, Lance with Keith, and Keith took the first shot. Lance fired back and then they ran. But Keith was injured and slowing quickly, so Lance opted to hide instead.

They crouched in the brush, watching as the Galra swept the area and came closer and closer. The others were too far out, they would not reach them before the Galra did. Keith was breathing heavily beside him, eyes closed and hand clutching at his wound. Lance didn't think he'd make it if the Galra got to him.

So he made a decision. He crawled away from where Keith was, shooting the two Galra who noticed the movement, and then stood and broke into a sprint. He could distract them, lead them away from Keith until the others had a chance to rescue him. He might not be a good Paladin, but he could be a good teammate.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It took the Paladins almost a month after Lance was captured to realize who had been leaving the gifts.


End file.
